


The Cersei That Jaime Sees

by littlemissdelirious



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Consensual Underage Sex, Developing Relationship, F/M, Family, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Sibling Incest, Tywin Lannister's A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-08
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-06 20:08:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17351780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlemissdelirious/pseuds/littlemissdelirious
Summary: In a series of prim movements, she pulls her shift down over her legs and blows out the last candle, and it occurs to him how bizarre it all is, that they can be made of the same flesh and the same blood and yet wear their bruises so differently.A collection of oneshots about Cersei and Jaime Lannister, and their years growing up in Casterly Rock and growing apart in King’s Landing.





	1. Void

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve been dying to write for this fandom for a while now, but I’m a bit uncertain about my ability to write the characters, so during my last rewatch I made a list of the anecdotes they told, the conversations I wish they'd had, and the scenes that I loved and wanted to try my hand at translating into words - all of which I thought would make for good practice - and here is the result! As of now:
> 
> The chapters will progress chronologically, and each will jump ahead a few years. 
> 
> Ch. 4 is the only addition that will contain underage sex – incest will be referenced if not present in all the chapters that follow. 
> 
> A few details have been borrowed from the books, but plot and characterization are entirely show-centric.
> 
> [title taken from ACOK Tyrion VI]

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _The gods have no mercy, that’s why they’re gods. My father taught me that when he caught me praying. My mother had just died, you see, and I didn’t really understand the concept of death, the finality of it. I thought that if I prayed very, very hard, the gods would return my mother to me. I was four._

After Cersei passes through the shadowy maw of the solar and the heavy door thuds in her midst, Jaime slinks across the corridor, trying not to go about his eavesdropping too obviously. He trails his hands over the wall and pretends to admire the stonework, but inches forward until he forgets his ruse altogether, pressing his temple to the rough wooden plank and listening intently.

He flinches with every rebuke that he can make out, the pit in his stomach deepening, and then rolls his eyes when it all segues into a tired lesson on the expectations that they are held to as lords, as leaders, as _Lannisters,_ and instead sets his mind to plotting their positions on the other side: Father behind his desk, quill in hand, glancing up only when the point requires the emphasis of his piercing gaze. Cersei with that stubborn look she gets, chin tilted up and lips pursed, eyes blazing as her resolve flags and she tries not to cry.

“The gods have no mercy,” Father says. “That’s why they’re gods.”

This draws a scowl out of Jaime, who curls his fingers around the knob that is jutting into his side, willing Cersei into one of the haughty retorts that she spares on the tip of her tongue for circumstances like this—or else a sign that she’d like him to take it up on her behalf.

But there is no reply.

The remark is left to expand in the silence, the sounds grow sharper, and Jaime envisions Cersei turning it over again and again in her mind, realizing as she does that Father’s brutal words might just be the brutal truth. His heart aches for her, and he’s certain that this is his cue to barge in, like a knight in the stories, like the good brother he prides himself on being, even if it calls for nothing more than shifting Father’s attention while she gets her shield up. But his hand tightens and twists, and then it drops altogether.

As much as he wants to intervene, he decides that it would only make things worse for Cersei— and for himself. She does not know how to cope with Father’s disappointment; it eats right into her. But she won’t admit it and she would despise Jaime for acknowledging her distress. Until recently, she’s only had to answer to Mother, and even then it was only when she was caught misbehaving. This is leagues removed from all she’s known of discipline, from the light chiding and restrained smiles that arose when she soiled a new gown or grumbled about learning her letters.  

And so, for now, Jaime stays where he is and merely wishes that Father would be gentler with her, or at least fair, instead of flying full tilt into that tone he does, when he makes you feel like your existence is a sad jape. He cuts into you so casually and so cleanly, like a knife through warm butter, leaving you less than half the size you were when the interview began—and poor Cersei does not stand particularly tall yet. 

 _It’s not her fault_ , Jaime wants to say. Septa Amirelle told her that the gods’ mercy could be won with fasting and prayer, and Cersei got it in her head that she would cloister herself in the sept until the gods saw fit to reward her devotion with Mother’s life. Jaime joined in for a day, kneeling at the altar and murmuring nonsense under his breath, trying his hardest to pretend that he wasn’t taken aback by Cersei’s sudden diligence and serenity, or the high-flown words bubbling from her lips.

But he couldn’t help it; his mind veered down every path that it was meant to overlook and he was contemplating forfeit well before the first hour struck. He clenched his eyes shut and cracked them open moments later, stealing glimpses of Cersei and earning himself a pinch when he proclaimed, rather loudly, that he was bored out of his skull. And when he glanced up at the statue of the Mother, cold and towering and so unlike the memory of his own, he incurred no sympathy from her either.

Finally, he asked Septa Amirelle what he could do to hasten the process and entice Cersei back to his side, and he was told to beg the gods for the grace to overcome his difficult period of grief.

He was aghast, initially, and then he pondered what it meant and went coursing into relief, which quickly withered into more worry. He tried to warn Cersei that she was praying for the wrong thing. The stupid gods only had _grace_ to offer, and what good was that when they could forget their grief in exploration, in the secret cells and dark vaults of Casterly Rock—and in each other’s presence, no less. But she kept on praying, kept on mashing and sawing the food served up to her until it resembled something half-eaten. Once she fixes on a task, she won’t let it go—and she won’t listen to sense either, not even a little.

(She’s like Father that way, or so Mother used to tell him.)

“Lannisters don’t act like fools,” Father says now, and Jaime knows from experience that the scolding is nearing its end. He thinks he will attempt to explain it to Cersei once more.

 _Dead is dead_ , he will say.

No, he won’t. It sounds too much like Father’s callous logic.

Instead, he’ll recount the time he saw the dead sparrow. It was back when Cersei spent whole days shadowing Mother through the castle, sneaking out of her lessons to watch the daily proceedings within the Rock, as if Joanna Lannister was some kind of miracle made flesh. She clutched Mother’s hand and marvelled at the perfect balance of kindness and authority that underlay each direction, and when Mother was ill with the baby, she tried to pretend that she could step into the role. She ordered wenches about the kitchens and demanded the maester’s briefings as soon as ravens alighted in the rookery, so she could rush to Mother’s side and relay the contents of scrolls that she couldn’t understand herself. Jaime, meanwhile, wandered the surrounding fields alone, and he found a little bird that wouldn’t move no matter how roughly he prodded it with a stick.

It was tucked into the roots of a tree, where the worst of the elements couldn’t find it, and he quickly discerned that it was the product of the ruined nest dangling forlornly from the splintered branches above. He recalls the splayed wing, the staring eye, and how the crushed feathers shrivelled and melted into the ground a little more each day, until the afternoon that the remains were gone altogether—carried off and devoured, most like.

When he described it to Cersei after Mother died, she sneered and called him stupid. “You don’t know anything,” she said, cutting him to the quick.

 _You’re the one praying for nothing_ , he wanted to retaliate, but he merely shrugged and retreated from her bed chamber, leaving behind the raspberry tart that he’d pilfered from the supper table in the hopes that it would tempt her out of wilful starvation.

He was scared for her, and with good reason.

He can’t even clearly recollect how he felt and what he saw this very morn, only that he was frantic, that he was suddenly aware of the blood swishing around in his body, of the whole world blurring into a haze when Cersei rose from her chair after feigning another meal and her legs gave out under her. She clawed his hand until it hurt and cried out that she couldn’t see right and he couldn’t figure what he could do to help her, so he ran.

Dread uncoiled and crackled in his chest as he whipped through the corridors, sprinting headlong into what seemed like half the population of the Westerlands, toppling the artifacts that lined the walls, giving into expectations of the worst as Cersei’s pain throbbed in his heart and his guts and his fingertips. Mother’s death was hard, so hard, and the pangs still resound through him when he thinks of Father’s vacant looks, or Cersei’s tears, or Tyrion, who will never know her voice or her scent or her smile. But Cersei’s death is a whole other matter. Her life is his and his is hers—and he was not ready to die, not before noon, not ever. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to contemplate the possibility, but he was so certain that it was happening and the terror of it was too much to bear, so he raced to the solar and told Father, and Father told off Cersei.

And now Cersei drifts out of the dark chamber, hurting, with shock and loathing etched into the unnatural pallor of her face. He reaches for her, and she flinches and blinks and stares emptily. 

“I thought I could pray hard enough,” she says.

He puts an arm over her shoulders and touches the strands of golden hair that tangle there. It is bright and soft and reminds him of Mother. “I’m sorry, Cersei,” he says quietly.

Her frown splits and he braces himself for insults that will whiz through the air like knives and rain down on him like blows, but she only peers his way, closing her lips over nothing, and suddenly she is tearing down the corridor with as much force as her legs will allow. She throws herself desperately around the winding perimeter of the Rock, rounding corners without looking and narrowly dodging collisions with the unsuspecting guards, the jutting walls, the doors left ajar, and she doesn’t halt until she has barrelled through the galleries, the halls, the empty chambers, and skidded into the nursery, where Tyrion gurgles and squeals in his cradle.

Jaime hovers in the doorway, hesitating. He likes the baby. Not as much as he liked Mother and not nearly as much as he likes Cersei, but he enjoys responding to the wordless phrases that pour from his brother’s clumsy mouth, and reaching out to the pudgy, grasping hands, and the way Tyrion’s tiny black eyes follow every movement they catch.

Cersei does not share any of these sentiments.

There is a hard look in her eyes, almost like Father’s, but it makes for a poor poultice over the yawning wound that is visible in the context of her whole expression, and he sees, clearly, that it will not be scabbing over any time soon. All the hurt, all the hate, writhes to the surface and congregates around Tyrion, and her knuckles go white as her fingers curl and tighten over the edge of the cradle. She stares down at the flailing infant with a terrible fury, and Jaime immediately wishes that Father would have just let her pray; made her eat but let her pray. 

“This _thing_ killed Mother,” Cersei says, through gritted teeth, and Jaime swallows his reply as he approaches her with all the care that he can muster.

 _It’s not his fault_ , he wants to say, but he knows that she won’t heed it, so he simply reaches out and spreads his hand over hers. He feels the muscles flex and loosen under his palm, and he smiles rather dumbly when she turns to meet his eyes, for he expects to find solace or forgiveness or a tiny glimmer of hope, but her anger crumples into misery and she rips her hand away, shooting out the door. 

He doesn’t find her until she is contained within her own chambers, a deadly storm between walls, and he enters warily, hearing the wreckage before he sees it strewn across the floor and flying through the air. The bedposts creak and rattle as she beats a pillow against the frame, before she casts it aside and sends a blizzard of feathers spiralling overhead. She kicks the wash basin off the stand, tepid water draining onto the rushes, and overturns a tray of fruit on the table. She seizes the wood carving that Uncle Gerion whittled for her and hurls it so that it sails headlong into a chest at the other end of the room and snaps in two.

She claws the coverlet from the bed and then she freezes, panting, tears streaking her pale face, and realizes that he has been standing silently in the corner, watching her every move.

“Get out,” she snarls.

“Father will be angry again,” he says, trying not to sound shaken.

She launches herself forward and shoves him as hard as she can, but he anticipates the violence and plants his feet before they can betray him by so much as a toe’s breadth.

“Get out!” she cries again, pushing him with even less restraint, and this time his ankles catch in the twisted sheets and he stumbles backwards, landing roughly on his elbows. She looms over him, staring, looking halfway scared and halfway ashamed, and all at once her face is pressed in her hands and she is trembling violently, crying, so he scrambles to his feet without thinking and puts his arms around her.

“I hate you,” she says, thrashing in his grip. “I hate you. I hate you. I _hate_ you.”

The words pierce and twist, but he only pulls her in tighter, until Cersei spins in his arms and weeps against his shoulder. He kisses her all over her face, because that’s what Mother did for him when he snuck into the armoury to look at the swords and ended up jamming his thumb and skinning his knees. It made everything better then, so he is confident that it will work now. But Cersei’s limbs quiver and her tears leave a trace of salt on his lips, and the despair pulses through his body and into his heart, punching into it like a key into a lock and unleashing all the grief that’s gathered there. He pictures Mother and it hurts, hurts the worst it’s ever hurt, so he begins to cry too, clinging to Cersei so that they shake with the force of each other’s sobs.

They cry themselves to sleep and wake tucked neatly into the foot of the bed, nestled in the warmth of the afternoon sun and the heat of each other’s arms. Jaime sees a lone tear glistening in Cersei’s eyelashes, so he wipes it away and asks her if she will sup with him, and then thinks better of it and makes her promise that she will. Cersei sniffles and nods and they head to the hall.

A steward brings word that their lord father won’t be joining them, which is hardly a new development and, at this point, a breath of relief they didn’t realize they needed. Jaime takes advantage of the absence of that terrible, rigid silence that seems to accompany Father into every seat, stepping out into the vast space before the table to toss berries in the air and snag them with his mouth as they descend—that is, when they don’t smack into his nose or his forehead and bounce away. He pulls faces and does his best impression of Cousin Orson, gently prodding Cersei into fits of laughter, inciting giggles so powerful that they become coughs, leaving her bunched up and heaving.

He repeats the mummer’s games until they wear thin, as if the gods didn’t rob them of so many days together and Father didn’t rob them of the gods, as if the past hours weren’t soaked in tears. None of that matters. Cersei laughs and laughs and laughs, and it is his favourite sound in the world.

He grins at her across the table and she grins back, and for a moment they almost forget that someone is missing. 


	2. Leap

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _When we were seven, you jumped off the cliffs at Casterly Rock. Hundred foot drop into the water. You were never afraid._

“A hundred feet, I reckon.”

Cersei stares at him as if he’s mad and clutches his wrist. “You _can’t_.”

“I can and I will,” he says haughtily, toes curling over the edge of the cliff, ears filled with the roar of the waves below. Since they found this spot, he’s longed to feel the air rush against him, taste the salt of the Sunset Sea on his tongue. “Let go of me,” he says, disentangling her fingers and shucking off his shirt.

“Jaime,” she says warningly. “I’ll tell Father.”

“You worry too much.” He wrenches her closer and she squeals, leaning into him as she comes into contact with the brink. “It’s only air, sister.”

“And those? Are those only air?” she says, pointing to an outcrop of rocks.

They pose danger, certainly, and from this angle the sharp tips are rather menacing, but Jaime hasn’t thought about the possibility of misfortune. His gaze hasn’t roamed nearer than the gulls swirling on the gusts and the distant sails of trader ships. It hasn’t had to. Death is something that eludes him—even with Mother in a tomb and hazy memories of the putrid corpses that once dangled from the gates of his home, even with Father’s constant warnings and all the boring lectures about the importance of having names and deeds and legacies that outlive the body.

None of it is worth the effort it would take to consider, not on a day as clear and simple as this, when no one is old and no one is sick and there are no battles or reavers or outlaws and nothing would _dare_ happen to him.

Cersei disagrees. He sees it in her face. There’s a twist to it that will surface many times in their lives: of pain, of rage, of something that might just be jealousy.

“Stand here—yes, _here_ —and just look for a bit, Cers,” he says, taking her hand and pulling her towards the edge. His eyes are on the horizon again. “This is what freedom must be.”

Cersei looks.

She looks down.

“It’s _not_ —”

He leaps.

There’s a moment of suspension, of being cradled in the air, before gravity curls its fingers around his core and yanks him towards the sparkling sheet of sea that rushes in from below. The water swallows him and he plunges down, down, down, and then shoots up and breaks the surface. He splutters, nose and lungs burning, but the grin is on his face before he can rub the salt and the sunspots from his eyes.

He swims languidly to the beach, letting the current roll over and against the aches and burns where his ungainly limbs took the brunt of the impact, and as he rounds the craggy pillars that jut from the shallows, he sees his sister standing knee-deep in the lapping waves, shielding her eyes with one hand and squinting into the distance. Her cheeks are flushed from the journey down and her skirts are bunched in the other fist, but they trail outward anyway, darkening with the wet blotches that seep through the folds of the fabric.

She looks as small and lovely as she does silly, and he nearly laughs as he listens to her calling over and over, for the voice that glides over the water is so desperate and confused and unlike her. It rings through the empty air, wavering, and then returns as a sad echo that gives her pause before she flings it out again.

Jaime can hardly recall the last time he saw her so uncertain, so disoriented, and so he gets it in his head that it would be a shame to squander the opportunity: Cersei in a state of worry, showing no signs of that vicious anger that simmers beneath the surface, rising up and over to best him when they squabble—and here he is, tucked into this shadow, poised to scare that advantage right out of her. He’d be a fool if he didn’t.

His hands and feet digging into the silt below, he creeps in, concealing himself among rocks and clumps of seaweed where possible, disappearing underwater when she whirls in his direction. He watches her take a tentative step forward and stop and repeat the motion, pouring so much effort into weighing her options that he can almost hear the thoughts that pinch her features. She glances up the lonely slope behind her and then twists back to stare out over the expanse of ocean in which he is adrift, or sinking, or else brained by whatever must have been lurking below.

It is a tough decision: she is not a strong swimmer, but it is some ways back to the Rock. 

“Jaime!” she calls. “Jaime! Jaime?” 

He springs from the surface and drags her under, laughing, splashing, feeling her kick and thrash until he can’t hold onto her any longer. She emerges like a wet cat, her eyes full of betrayal, fear gone to fury. “I wish you had dashed your head open,” she says in a strange pitch.

The grin is swept from his face when she wades clumsily to the shore and flees, leaving behind a trail of mucky footprints and a frown that wells in his chest and works its way over his mouth. He scrambles from the water and starts after her, finding one of her shoes nestled in a bramble halfway up the cliff, where it must have been discarded in haste, and all the while tries to ignore the guilt that stabs into his stomach and lodges there. His imagination reckons differently, however, and gathers up scenarios that combine and clamour and swoop through his head as a flock, troublingly realistic and too vivid to scatter.

The dizzying rush of the descent must have been different from Cersei’s perch: watching him fly through the air, shouting nothing into the roaring wind and slamming into the water, a speck swallowed by the rippling current. He imagines this, and then he imagines Cersei peering over the ledge, crying out as her own moment of suspension tightened around her and she hurled herself down to the beach with expectations of the worst.

And then he imagines that it was Cersei leaping from the cliffs on her own, vanishing into the waves, washing up on the shore, clammy and too still and gone forever, and the guilt slides out and stabs in harder. The two wounds merge into one gaping pit and the vast emptiness in his gut—not quite pain and not quite nausea and yet both at once—is all he needs to understand what he’s done. He meant to scare her. She’d already been scared. And he was a fool for expecting her to take it well.

Her other shoe is at the very top of the cliff. He retrieves it and rubs the pad of his thumb over the fraying sole, thinking he should apologize.

But he doesn’t.

He is lunching in the hall, flicking grapes at Tyrion, when he is summoned to the solar— _immediately_. Cersei stands behind the desk, a smug little tilt to her lips as Father picks apart every rash decision and needless risk that went into the leap, mustering that terrible, perfect calm of his, along with painstaking accuracy, and then doles out the punishment. Jaime’s lessons are doubled in duration. _To fill his head with sense instead_. He spends days labouring over the characters that blur and coil and plague him until he starts to think that his eyes are melting, and he seethes silently, casting sour looks at Cersei as she sits opposite him and mutilates linens with her embroidery needles, pretending not to notice.

They live entirely separate lives for a fortnight and it is, quite frankly, the worst of Jaime’s life. He doesn’t sleep or laugh or take joy in anything at all, but he refuses to yield before she does—not this time, not ever again. Cersei ruins everything that she can’t take part in and he won’t stand for it any longer.

That is, he won’t stand for it any longer than a fortnight.

They forget why they were fighting in the first place—or at least he does. He misses her terribly. He forgoes the need for an apology; he’d settle for acknowledgement. He stops grimacing at her over Father’s shoulder. He collects the best seashells that he can find and leaves them on her pillow. And when Aunt Genna visits for Father’s name day, losing herself in her cups and producing a belch that nearly unseats her husband, scrawny little Emmon, he snickers and prods Cersei beneath the table and gets something that is almost, not quite, but so close to a smile that his heart pushes excitedly against his ribs.

Eventually, they venture out onto the beach together and she doesn’t protest when he takes her hand and guides her to the spot where they parted all those days ago. He spreads harsh grains of sand against her knees and then he carves _forgive me_ beside the gleaming white skin of her legs. It takes some time, and he has to try again when the ‘r’ and the ‘g’ come out in the wrong order, but he’s practiced, stealing secret moments when the maester left him to work through his sums. Cersei watches from beneath downturned lashes and doesn’t say anything.

That night, Jaime is lying alone when the door to his chamber opens and a shadow creeps in. Cersei climbs over top of him, the length of her body aligning with the length of his, nuzzling her face into the folds of his nightshirt and nipping at the spot between his shoulder blades. He closes his eyes, in relief, in submission, as she slides up so that her chin is nestled where his neck curves into his collarbone.

“I was frightened,” she says quietly. The words are hot against his skin.

“I know,” he says. “I know.”


	3. Bruises

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _And when we were young, Jaime and I, we looked so much alike that even our father couldn't tell us apart. I could never understand why they treated us differently: Jaime was taught to fight with sword and lance and mace, and I was taught to smile and sing and please._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a lot of fun with this one! It's inspired by the quote above, as well as a few of the things that were brought up by Tywin and Arya at Harrenhal, including Jaime's dyslexia and this little gem of an exchange:
> 
> "Aren't most girls interested in the pretty maidens from the songs? Jonquil with flowers in her hair?"
> 
> "Most girls are idiots."
> 
> "Ha! You remind me of my daughter."

Under Father’s stern eye, in the crushing fold of his tutelage, Jaime’s facility with letters gets better—and then drastically worse. He reports to the solar instead of the maester’s quarters and languishes there for four hours every day, barely masking his contempt as he slouches over the vast array of maps and books and scrolls that are laid out on the desk.

It isn’t long before he admits defeat, adjusting with relative ease to the notion that he is merely stupid, but he stays quiet and pretends to mull Father’s advice anyway, tracing the lines that swirl over the pages with careful fingers, as if the slashes and curls and strange flourishes make any sense at all, as if the walls don’t close in a little more whenever he happens to glance up.

 _You won’t succeed in a task unless it’s approached with a keen and clear mind. Focus._   

Every so often Jaime does try to focus, because in the depths of his heart he would like to make Father proud, to be the son who can clear his mind and conquer any task, even if he has the distinct feeling that he’ll never be able to fulfill that role—not to the extent that Father requires, at any rate. Mostly, though, he would like to escape the lessons that enclose his days like manacles, to return to afternoons in the sun with Cersei, riding and running and wrestling in the fields, or else to begging sweets off the kitchen wenches with Tyrion. And so he arches forward, staring at the words and coming up with different pronunciations each time, never the same one twice, never the _correct_ one, and realizing too late that the thing that’s bounded so confidently off his tongue is not a thing that he’s heard before.  

_Back to the beginning._

His hands fidget with the corners of the scrolls and the fringes of the quills and his mind wanders far beyond the confines of the chamber, because where is Cersei, what is Tyrion doing, why is it so difficult for him to do what even the steward’s boy can manage, and why is it so important when his siblings can already do it much better. They will be near enough to contribute, always, he’s certain of it, and he can’t think of two people more trustworthy than they are, but Father doesn’t see that. Father sees only what he wants to see, sees only what weakens the family and how it will be overcome, and so he refuses to accept that Jaime, who represents so much, could be less than good at something—and incurably, at that.

_You are the heir of Casterly Rock, you are the future of this house, and you are my son. Again._

In many ways, Cersei and Tyrion are as unwilling to accept it as Father is, but their support is less aggressive, less mind-numbing, and when it becomes clear that Father’s patience is infinite, Jaime overrules his pride and lets them in on the cause. They help him to memorize the maps— _read the pictures, not the words_ , Tyrion suggests—and to learn the stories by heart, nicking the books from Father’s solar so that he can practice reciting the lore, which is simpler than relying on what’s written.

He repeats the words and laughs when they mime the legends with flailing arms: the history of the Targaryens, of Lann the Clever and the Casterlys, of houses they’ve never encountered and lineages that mean nothing to them. Together, they master every story they can find in the castle, navigating through sentences based on their vague shape, or clues in the illustrations, and working at his signature until his muscles recognize the swoops and arches better than his mind does.  

It succeeds eventually, each leg of the process, and somehow convinces Father, or else spurs the poor man so far down his road of denial that he can’t circle back, but the process is an arduous one.

For all their good intentions and hard-won triumphs, his siblings are not always ideal mentors. Cersei sits very close and strokes the nape of his neck, murmuring words in a voice that makes his ears tingle—and then gets bored in the span of a second and ambles around the room, then quite likely out of it. Tyrion persists longer, but each new strategy scalds like pity, and Jaime hates directly comparing their abilities, hates being reminded that he is dumber than his baby brother. And so, when his lessons are reduced and returned to the care of Maester Volarik, Jaime immediately switches his tactics, preferring to carry out his tasks by way of bribery.

Dishonest as it is, it’s not difficult, and having Tyrion copy out his lines is a matter of exchanging a few tarts beneath the table at supper, or occasionally satisfying a dare. Jaime’s twin, however, drives a harder bargain, knowing full well that she presents an even more desirable prospect: she can shrug into his clothes and endure the lessons in his stead, pretending to stumble through sentences, writing with her left hand so as to imitate his scrawl, feigning signs of improvement to ensure that Father catches no wind of his regressing skills.

And it all rests on one condition: if she takes his place during lessons, then she takes his place in the training yard. 

Jaime has mixed feelings about this, even after he’s agreed to it numerous times. On one hand, his prowess with a sword is progressing at the rate of a month’s improvement each day; he is building a reputation that is entirely his own—the kind that leads to a place in the stories, to the legendary Book of Brothers, to titles like the Dragonknight, or the White Bull, or Barristan the Bold. Yet it is important enough to the family that Father deems it necessary to hunt for the best master-at-arms in the kingdom, the best armourers, the best horses, and Jaime can’t bear the thought of Cersei inadvertently sabotaging his mounting glory in a few clumsy strokes.

On the other hand, she is being overlooked and, gods, it bothers her. Oftentimes, he’ll pause to recover his breath, peering past the glare of the sun, through the gaping windows, and he’ll catch her watching from above. If Tyrion is present, he’ll grin and wave, but Cersei always looks deeply upset before she grimaces and turns away. She is aching to try—and he understands why, because when she dons his clothes and he is buried in hers, or when he sneaks away and hides in her chambers, toying idly with the dolls and the trinkets and the needles until he thinks he’ll go mad, the truth makes itself apparent: as much as he loves Cersei, he’ll never love _being_ Cersei. 

He can read the look on her face better than any scroll, the way it scrunches with anger, then quickly smooths out, shoved under a feeble mask of neutrality. It affects her most when she enters the hall and sees him re-enacting his matches for Tyrion, brandishing a knife, swinging out at imaginary foes and dancing around imaginary obstacles. Or, even worse, when he is showing Tyrion his bruises, the ugly purple splotches that coat his arms and legs, which he hastily covers, shrugging them away before she can surmise how much pride they inspire.

“Don’t stop on my account,” she snaps, and he does not know what to say.

However, in the days that follow such incidents, he tries to make it up to her, exaggerating an interest in her needlework, in whatever mundane pattern she’s been told to recreate this time. He admires the dresses and the cushions and the linens, nodding, as if he is any judge, and saying things like _the lion is really good, Cers_ and _I like this bit here_ , but he’s not nearly as adept at acting as he is at swordplay, so the empty words hardly sound like compliments.

What’s more, they submerge him in a cold draught of his own guilt, plunging him to a point where he can barely return her gaze—her eyes bore into his, his drop to the floor—though he could swear that the disquiet is mutual. They’ve become equally, often fearfully, aware of the fact that their similarities do not render them the same: he trains so that he can enter into tourneys and venture into wars and bring honour to their house; she sews now so that she can sew more.

But, oh, how he loves it, and he’ll never be able to explain that to her—what it is to discover a passion, and then to discover that you have a talent for it. He’ll never be like his siblings, who can identify places on maps like the lines on their hands, who form words in their minds faster than he can blink. But put a sword in Jaime’s hand and he feels _smart_. He takes the measure of his opponent and it’s as if he can see their movements before they decide to lunge. _Intuition_ , Tyrion calls it. And this is why Jaime displays his bruises with so much pride: because they are not nearly as severe as the marks he left on his opponents. Because they mean he picked up some experience, some new trick, and now he’s earned the badge for it, clusters of cloudy patches on his skin that symbolize all the mistakes he’ll never repeat.  

“I’d like to have one,” Cersei says, after he’s told her this, as she is examining a particularly nasty weal on his shin that’s faded its way through most of the rainbow, purple to yellow. Not three nights later, she makes her proposition.

They’re huddled in her bed, underneath the coverlet, and she raises the subject as though she hasn’t planned the scheme in its entirety. Skeptical as he is, his mouth gives over to a smile. Her tone is blasé, but the determination shines through, as does the mischief in her eyes and the wonder it begets in his, for there is a world of appeal in the notion of bowing out of the daily torment that is his lessons.

So he agrees, they swap clothes the next afternoon, and Cersei scrambles down to the yard, grunting and thrashing her way through her first beating.

Jaime crouches by the window with the best vantage point, mired in his own trepidation, and braces for disaster every time Hugo, the great lug from Lannisport, gathers up his strength and swings out at her. “Hit him back,” he breathes, “Cers, hit him back,” but she can barely heft the sparring sword, and he can already predict how sore her arms will be for the next while. He fixates on it, imagining the ache in his own wrists and palms, as it’s a pain that’s much easier to stomach than his sudden visions of what will result from the blows that crack against her legs and her ribs, knocking her back into the dirt.

She is abysmal, there’s no denying it. She trips over her own feet, shrinks back and hunches in protectively, and too frequently she loses her balance and goes sprawling, her limbs splaying outward like a newborn faun’s. But she grits her teeth and rises, over and over, until the master-at-arms takes pity and calls it in.

“I let myself get distracted,” she says, drawing a curious look, because Jaime would never admit to such a thing, would never have to.

“Don’t be too hard on yourself, lad,” the master-at-arms says, clapping her on the shoulder. “The best knights miss their mark some days.”

Jaime could almost kiss the man as he waits for the group to disperse; he’s so grateful for the rare show of lenience, because he can’t imagine how low Cersei is feeling. And he’s right, because he races to meet her and she promptly dodges to the left, down the corridor, up the stairs, anywhere she can to avoid his scrutiny. 

“That was better than my first try,” he says, skipping steps to match her pace. “Remember? Ugly Tom got me round the head and nearly killed me. I was dizzy for days.”

She strips out of his clothes, making no reply to his questions, his gentle criticisms, his quips, only granting him a reaction when he reaches out to prod the welt that’s already blooming on her side—and, even then, it’s simply to hiss that she wants to be alone. He concedes and slinks out of her chamber, waiting in distress until she emerges for supper, the dread worsening tenfold as he watches her poke at her food and respond absently to Father. She even abides Tyrion’s japes about all the nefarious things that can make their way into a stew, not once commenting on his indecency.

“It’s like dancing,” Jaime says, later, when they are tucked into bed and she can’t evade him. “You’re good at that, aren’t you?” But he swiftly discerns that he’s done something wrong, because she flops onto her front and claims she’s too tired to discuss the matter any further.

“Cers, I didn’t mean—”

“Would you just shut up?” she says abruptly, and he relents, curling around her and burying his face in her hair. At the very least, he knows that he’s not the one with whom she’s angry, for she draws his arm over her and presses his hand to her chest, and by the time they are breaking their fast in the hall she responds to him in a much better humour.

The soreness—bodily and otherwise—dissipates wholly over the course of a fortnight, but Jaime’s qualms are slow to follow suit, and all flood back when she insists on having another go at Hugo.

They make the same deal, though with far more reluctance on his end, and this time he hands over myriad pointers along with his shirt and breeches. In terms of moves and parrying, she’s no worse than she was half a moon ago, but there’s still a difference to spot: she’s freer in her conduct. She hacks and elbows and curses and works her mouth, spitting as far as she can after a particularly grueling bout, then glances around as if expecting to find someone stooping over her with reproaches on their tongue. When she’s certain that no one cares enough to berate her, she does it again, revelling in that tiny liberty—Jaime can see the way she relaxes—before she rolls her shoulders and resumes her stance.

She loses every round, of course, but at least her grip on the pommel is tighter, and she isn’t as put out after the fact. Not until days later, when her skirts hitch on a chair and expose an ugly bruise on her ankle, requiring her to devise an off-the-cuff tale about having tripped down a stairwell and landed awkwardly.

“Such things wouldn’t happen if you descended steps with caution and grace,” Septa Amirelle says, “which—and I needn’t remind you—is the behaviour expected of all proper ladies.”

Jaime is infuriated by this, yearning to lash out at the old bat, telling her how it really is, but he won’t risk Cersei’s secrets to refute a momentary scolding. They’re already waiting for Father to catch on to their game, as if it is inevitable (though really it is more than unlikely), just as they wait for him to realize that years have passed since Jaime last spent a night in his own bed. He and Cersei talk until the moon has ascended and arced and then they sleep in each other’s arms to stave off each other’s nightmares. It is the dearest part of his day; he wouldn’t dare jeopardize it by attracting sharper eyes.

Instead, he sits patiently through supper, wastes the subsequent hours, and as soon as the stars have taken up their post in the sky, he makes his usual journey down the dark corridor. He joins Cersei, who is absorbed by a frayed thread on the coverlet, and crawls in beside her, gently nudging her back and rooting through her sleeves and her skirts, scouting out the concealed bruises and pressing his mouth to each one, because he thinks they should be acknowledged.

When he’s found them all, he brushes his thumb over the crooks of her knees and the insides of her elbows and the curve of her heel until she’s annoyed enough to shove his hands away, but he notes with satisfaction that the corners of her lips are quirking, just a bit, and she laces her fingers through his hair, bringing his head to rest in her lap.

“If we’re the same, then why are you better?” she asks, as if she’s not really seeking an answer—not one that he can give, anyway.

He shrugs. “Why are you better at reading?”

She says nothing, and he matches her silence for silence, staying very still and watching her very closely. In a series of prim movements, she pulls her shift down over her legs and blows out the last candle, and it occurs to him how bizarre it all is, that they can be made of the same flesh and the same blood and yet wear their bruises so differently.

It’s a thought that dogs him as things begin to change; Cersei builds up her technique, little by little, and eventually he forgets to be embarrassed when he is substituted by her, even going as far as teaching her the moves that he’s reworked and taken on as his specialties—the ones he wouldn’t dare impart to anyone else. But he and Cersei have become vigilant, aware of adults, paying mind to the topics that swirl through their conversations in the great hall and on the other sides of walls, and they can’t help but regard the warnings for what they are.

Uncle Kevan makes his routine visit to Casterly Rock and his passing remark— _I’ll be able to tell them apart soon enough_ —slices through the din and has them at the ready, like the rasp of a weapon being unsheathed. Jaime’s head snaps up, eyes connecting with Cersei’s across the table, and they realize simultaneously that their uncle is voicing the inevitable—a matter that is swiftly confirmed when they listen outside the solar to Aunt Genna, who informs Father, in a tone that is not to be trifled with, that Cersei ought to be surrounded by girls her age.

“Rampaging through the corridors and bickering with her brothers is all well and good,” she says, “but the girl is lacking in courtesy and too stubborn by far. It won’t do if you mean to pursue this betrothal.”

(Cersei bristles. “Do you think Visenya Targaryen’s aunt thought she was ‘too stubborn by far’?”

 _“Betrothal?”_ Jaime mutters.)

But, in the end, these are all facts, and they must be accounted for. Their bones will shift—their faces, too—and they’ll be shunted into different circles, and when that happens, Cersei will never hold a sword again. The reality of it clarifies in the hazy rays of sunlight that slant through the window and creep along the floor, heralding the hour of Cersei’s last excursion to the training yard. She is understandably shaky, pulling his shirt over her head and smoothing it down with twitchy hands, unable to return his looks of concern and sympathy.

The previous night, before dessert was served, Father decided to bring up the two young girls who were on their way to the Rock, who’d been invited in order to keep Cersei company—“To spy on me, he means,” Cersei said crossly, in the privacy of her chamber, “and to boss me around,”—and Father explained, at length, the degree of hospitality that would be expected of Cersei, as befit a lady of noble birth. At this, two identical smiles collapsed, because they both knew, instinctively, that it was ending— _something_ was ending—and Cersei would no longer be able to break away from herself, not for long enough to take Jaime’s place, at any rate.

As such, this is her last chance to prove—whatever it is she yearns so desperately to prove; that wish that she’s been harbouring in the murky depths of her heart. The tension that comes with it suffuses the air around her, thrums along her nerves so forcefully that it runs through his, and he wishes her luck with all the solemnity he can muster. She jerks her head in a nod, and then she is gone.

The first round goes poorly.

And the second is not much better, but Cersei is getting angrier, lashing out with the reckless, chaotic energy of someone who knows they’ll lose otherwise.

After she has yielded, she springs up quickly, tightening her hold on her sword and taunting Hugo, as if she has any right to, until he gnashes his teeth and lumbers forward, causing her to retreat back a few steps and dodge where she can’t parry directly. He aims low, then high, and she manages to block most of the attempts with her shield, bringing her sword around in time to catch his wrist. But there isn’t enough strength behind it and the meagre blow glances off; she stumbles instead. From there, it doesn’t take much effort for him to topple her.

Cersei’s legs coil underneath her and she tries to rise, sliding one knee below and the other up, but her arm wavers as she blocks a harsh strike, and the force of it causes her to drop onto her back. Hugo takes unrelenting cracks at her sword, trying to dislodge it, but she clutches it firmly and keeps it raised, wincing, as if half-expecting one of his vicious arcs to connect with her face. She rolls to the side, narrowly missed, and swings out blindly, but her grip loosens with the repeated jolts and her sword eventually goes flying from her hand, producing a daunting thud as it lands beyond her reach.  

She gapes upwards, fear and fury and despair written plain on her face as Hugo’s cruel gash of a mouth pulls into a sneer. He advances, looming over her, brandishing his sword like a club and preparing to bring it down. But then she gets that look—Jaime would know it anywhere—when her eyes flash and go hard and her lips press together, and it happens. She spots her opening; she seizes it.

While Hugo is off his guard, Cersei swings out her legs with precisely no caution or grace and hooks them around his ankles, yanking so savagely that he flails in mid-air for a brief second and then comes down hard on his arse. He sprawls in the dirt, dazed, and before he can react, she has the tip of his own sword pressed into the fat under his chin.

He yields. 

Flushed and panting, Cersei looks to the master-at-arms, who nods approvingly, and then to the window, sensing that her twin has been there the whole time, willing her on, and Jaime’s heart swells at the sight of her triumphant grin. He winks and waves and makes a show of applause, and she plunges into her demurest curtsey, much to the confusion of the men milling about the yard.    

Later that evening, she pulls Jaime into her chambers, dropping to the floor and tugging up her skirts to show him the crop of swollen, purpling bruises that obscure her knee. She gazes down at it, almost lovingly, and then flicks her bright eyes up at him and says, “It’s quite beautiful, isn’t it?”

“It is,” he agrees, but he is really looking at her as she is, as a whole—her bruised knees, her small hands, her haughty smile—and his heart pulses and aches, burdened with an onslaught of love and pride and just the tiniest twinge of sadness. It is so much at once that he can barely comprehend what he’s doing as he vaults forward and kisses her.


End file.
